One Comes Along
by Romann
Summary: Every now and then, very rarely, a crime will linger in DI Lestrade's mind long after he leaves the scene.


Sherlock's hand slipped into Lestrade's pocket with practised ease, if no discretion at all, in search of the keys, but Lestrade fidgeted and swatted it away.

'I can open my own front door, thanks,' he grumbled, proceeding to do it without taking his eyes from the text his other hand was mechanically typing.

'They won't have sent anything yet.' Sherlock breathed out in annoyance when Lestrade, ignoring him completely, bolted to the laptop as soon as the door clicked shut behind them. 'I hear pathologists sleep every now and then.'

'Worth a shot,' Lestrade said simply, refreshing his inbox at the same time as he attempted a phone call. 'They can't be all gone. The body won't have arrived too long ago.'

'We already know everyth—'

'I don't need to be lectured again on how stupid I am compared to you,' Lestrade snapped, sitting cross-legged on the sofa as he pounded away at the keyboard. 'Last time was only this morning. It may not look like it, but I actually have good memory.'

'What I meant,' Sherlock continued, rather less impatiently than usual, 'was that everything we could get from the body, we already know. Everything else will have to wait until tomorrow, assuming the next of kin will bother to pick up the phone.'

Oh, God, the next of kin. A brother somewhere in Norfolk. The victim was young enough, there were probably parents still around somewhere, too.

'Are you _sure _the murderer sat and waited while he bled out?' Lestrade asked, after a beat, holding onto the feeble hope that both his instincts and Sherlock's were wrong.

'Hard to tell if he sat, in that awful light, but yes, I'm sure he waited.' Their cold breath lingered for a feeble moment between them. 'Why is the heating off?'

Lestrade's eyes didn't shift from the screen. Sherlock cast an irritable look around the darkened room. 'The house is _freezing_.'

'I wasn't in all day, no point in leaving it on,' Lestrade muttered absently. The image he had tried to suppress all night flashed, unbidden, in front of his eyes. 'If this has to do with the stabbing two weeks ago—' he said to himself. 'I _wanted _that case. I shouldn't have— '

'The canal drowning was vastly more interesting than the monthly drunken knifing in Highgate. More important, too. Even—' Sherlock interrupted himself before Mycroft's name slipped out, but Lestrade, focused on the crime scene photos, paid him no attention. 'There's nothing more you can do tonight. You're wasting your energy,' he added, as though personally offended by the notion.

'If this is a serial killer...' Lestrade muttered to himself, because the possibility looked alarmingly likely and a small part of him hoped voicing it would somehow highlight an alternative. It only made it look bitterly real.

_Another _serial killer. The press would leap at the chance to vilify him, and the Met, again. Here's to another few months of the public opinion despising them and the newspapers sabotaging them, leaking confidential data under the guise of responsibility to the public. It was all very well for them. It wouldn't be them seeing the stiff in their dreams. Twenty-seven. He was a _kid_. What was a kid doing, bleeding to death ten feet from his own doorstep?

'Knife crime has been on the rise for years. The only thing random stabbings tell us is that good knives are getting cheaper and people are still unimaginative,' Sherlock pointed out in the closest he could get to a calming tone.

Lestrade inhaled noisily. 'And if they're not random?' He zoomed in on a bloodless patch on the pavement. 'Could he have waited here?'

Sherlock sighed, sat down beside him. 'Maybe,' he conceded,' though I think that spot is more likely,' He pointed at the equally bloodless area beside the corpse's shoulder, 'considering he'd want the victim to be able to see the mobile phone.'

'What mobile phone?'

'The one he took from the victim's left hand – see the flat palm, curled fingers, the way the thumb and the index finger are extended, like something was dragged out of the hand? – and replaced on his jeans. He put it in the wrong pocket. But it's irrelevant. Mostly.'

Lestrade's grip on the keyboard faltered as he pictured the scene, and Sherlock took the opportunity to snatch the laptop from him.

'Gimme that,' Lestrade complained belatedly.

Ignoring the order, Sherlock slipped it casually under the sofa and leant towards him, looking into his eyes with a frown. 'Did you know him? _That _might be relevant.'

'No. Give me my laptop—' he complained, reaching across Sherlock's lap and finding a palm pressing against his chest to stop him. It was so unexpected, Sherlock going to the trouble of physically restraining him, that for a moment he stared dumbfounded at the gloved hand. The murderer would have been wearing gloves too, he wouldn't have risked leaving fingerprints behind if he had planned on handling the victim's belongings. And if he had planned it... 'I _can't _just sit here. I need to find out what I can.'

'There's very little else to find out, and it's not happening at this time of night because nobody cares as much as you. Everyone's asleep. We'll have all we need in the morning.'

They'd have hostile press reports and a family who would never sleep soundly again, not much more. Lestrade turned to his mobile, where the incoming text count remained unchanged.

'You didn't know him. It wasn't a remarkably original killing.' Sherlock commented, as though reading out a checklist. 'Why does this one matter so much?'

'They always matter. They're _dead_.'

'Heaps of them, every month, and you're never so... upset.' The pause seemed to indicate Sherlock had changed his choice of words at the last second.

He had said something to that effect in the crime scene, when Lestrade's gaze lingered a moment too long on the blood pooling around the poor sod's not-yet rigid corpse. For once, Lestrade welcomed the baleful glance Anderson cast Sherlock then. Anderson understood, and Sherlock didn't. He couldn't, wasn't equipped for it.

'Sometimes it's just harder to take in,' he eventually said, neglecting to elaborate. You can't beat yourself up over every last one you find. Even if it's gruesome, even if it's kids. You'd be bonkers within two months. You pull yourself together and do your job, and that's all. But every now and then, one comes along that just sticks with you. Just because. You just know, the moment you see them, they'll take up residence behind your eyelids. And you'll have to deal with them. And try not to apologise aloud next time you help someone when you couldn't help them. 'For no reason. Relax, I'm not going to cry on your smart suit.'

Surprisingly, the awkward pause that followed was broken by Sherlock. 'Do you want to?'

Lestrade looked up from the mobile. Sherlock eyes met his intermittently, awkwardly, as though he genuinely did not know if that was what Lestrade wanted, or how he should react. Under different circumstances, Lestrade might have dwelt a bit on that.

'No.'

The hand that had never left his chest relaxed marginally, lingering against the buttons as though forgotten, but Sherlock's eyes had narrowed again, their gaze almost professional in its coldness.

'It's not... like that,' Lestrade felt he had to add. 'It's not personal in that way—it's not _personal_.'

'And yet.'

'You don't get it,' he cut in, and Sherlock's nose twitched. 'It's all a big fun game for you. Which is fair enough,' he added when Sherlock had the gall to look a bit offended. 'You're solving a puzzle, you're not a cop.' Lestrade took a deep breath, but said nothing more.

'I feel there's a point you're trying to make that I'm not quite gleaning,' Sherlock eventually prompted.

'It's not a walk in the park, the Met.' Lestrade paused. What was he expected to add? A lovingly detailed description of how much you give up on the force, maybe. How lonely it could be, how difficult. How half his team were sleeping with each other because no-one had the time to look for someone outside the force and convenience was better than complete loneliness. That would be wise. Give Sherlock more ammunition.

'That's why they resent you,' he conceded in the end, because Sherlock was expecting _something_. 'They train for years, work hard, and then you strut in, bounce about as if it's all _such a fun little puzzle_, like you can think just like the criminals and it's _great_...' he paused again, and Sherlock's eyes narrowed further. 'It's frustrating, half the time, this job. For the rest of us, I mean. You don't always sort it out. It's nasty, it's sad. Once you've seen a lot of that, for some it's easier to play it like a game. We have a few of those at the met. Puzzle-solvers. Not as good as you—'

'Obviously.'

'Not as dedicated, either. But that's the reasoning,' he went on, ignoring Sherlock's quip. 'It's a puzzle, it's a game, doesn't really matter. You clock in, sort out what you can, go home.' He shook his head, shrugged. 'Only thing that gets hurt is your ego. But I didn't give up half my life to sort out a puzzle. It's not enough for me. Some of them have to matter.' His delicate sensibilities hadn't horrified Sherlock into bolting out yet. Lestrade was genuinely surprised. Maybe there was mockery on the way.

'So if you went home and slept soundly, you'd be too much like a puzzle-solver,' Sherlock said quietly.

'Oh, I sleep fairly well most of the time.' Lestrade shook himself out of his reverie and refocused on his texts. 'And all this, of course, means nothing to you.'

The silence that followed was slightly more companionable, Sherlock shifting to accommodate his chin on Lestrade's shoulder and peek in apparent non-mockery at the texts he was sending.

'Sherlock,' he warned when the chin moved from his collarbone to the crook of his neck, Sherlock's breath slithering under his collar, warm, reassuringly steady. 'You really don't care _at all_ about what I said, do you?' He was torn between being unsurprised or disappointed by that.

'Enormously.' Sherlock's voice tickled him, and he twitched involuntarily towards it even as the sense that he had confided too much made the bile stir tentatively inside him. 'I just can't find anything equally noble and selfless to say in return, so I'm keeping—don't send that, it's nonsense.'

'It's stuff I need to find out.'

Sherlock licked his lips. The very tip of his tongue accidentally brushed Lestrade's neck, soft and swift as a breeze, and he had to concentrate to finish what he was saying. 'Us non-geniuses need all the data we can—'

'I promise you,' Sherlock murmured, each word inadvertently brushing his lips along the spot he had worried, 'there are exactly four bits of "stuff" you need to find out, and you will, tomorrow. I'll list them out for you if you give me your phone.'

'No,' Lestrade gritted out, gripping his mobile harder as Sherlock's hand glided along his shirt and onto it. He couldn't prioritise Sherlock tonight, didn't have the heart for it. This was one of those who _mattered_. Sherlock's free arm had begun a slow slither under his jacket and along the small of his back, a half-hearted embrace that made the hair on his back rise and his skin tingle, even as the gesture was cautious and uncertain. Sherlock was nervous.

Lestrade wouldn't have guessed it from his voice, low but self-assured against his ear, framed in softest touch his skin had ever received from those lips. Not that there had been many. 'There's nothing more we can do tonight.'

'I need to find out who did this.'

'You already know. All you're missing is a name.'

_'You _might.'

'Same thing,' Sherlock groaned, the cold tip of his nose pressing tetchily behind Lestrade's ear for a moment. 'The victim knew him, that's obvious—long-term, over ten years. The murderer isn't known to be violent, although he's got a taste for unusual weaponry. Wealthy, then, otherwise unremarkable. There can't be many people with those traits on the deceased's list of contacts, particularly if he's from Norfolk, as I suspect. If we manage to get in touch with the brother before midday, you may have this shut, paperwork included, before five,' Sherlock rattled off in one breath, extricating the phone from Lestrade's fingers in the process. 'You always look so surprised,' he added good-naturedly when Lestrade gaped at the barrage of information.

'How—'

'The left pocket, the left wrist, the bent legs, the watch on the wrong arm. Why bring me onto crime scenes if you're not going to listen to anything I say?'

'And you can narrow it down to one possible killer from that,' Lestrade mused.

'You seem surprised. Again.' But there was no sting to the words. The hand traipsing along Lestrade's back settled on his side, the seams of the leather glove grazing his skin through the thin shirt. It _was _almost as chilly here as it had been outside.

Lestrade suspected the heating had been on at the victim's house. Well-off guy in a nice area, just back from a night out... The fingers on his side pressed in slightly, running back and forth against his skin just as Lestrade had done to Sherlock that one time, when—oh God, the bloke bleeding out, covered in dew, right outside his comfortably warm home...

'If I'm—' Sherlock began, quickly correcting himself, his other hand toying absently with Lestrade's once the mobile phone had been sent the same way as the laptop. 'If you're right, we'll find him soon enough anyway. He's killing people in quiet areas in the most CCTV-riddled town in the world. He's not too smart.'

Lestrade's breath hitched at the thought of another killing, _another serial killer_, please let it be a private thing, and Sherlock swung his legs onto the sofa, leaning further against him for balance. He had kept his overcoat on along with his gloves, probably to make a point about the cold, and he felt warm, reassuringly familiar against Lestrade's side, even if this... domesticity... was entirely new territory for them.

'At least the brother got one last night of sound sleep,' he muttered at one point, because the lips dragging along his neck were distracting him and it seemed unfair to the stiff to just let it go before he was even fully cold.

'That matters to you.' Sherlock's voice was muffled, moist lips crackling against his skin. They _never _did this. Chatting. Petting each other comfortingly. Lestrade wondered how distraught he must look that Sherlock was _that _desperate.

'Well, it's just delaying the inevitable,' he shrugged, weaving his fingers into Sherlock's absently when they tried to go for his collar. 'But since it can't be helped—'

'I'd want to know,' Sherlock cut in, voice deeper and more like his usual tone. 'Immediately.'

'So would I,' he replied mechanically. 'Sometimes, though, it's only after you know that you see how much those last few moments of ignorance really were bliss, isn't it?'

He didn't even have to look at Sherlock to know he would be frowning, uncomprehending, as if Lestrade had spoken in an alien language. Sherlock's fingers toyed with his—although it could never be quite so simple with Sherlock. It was more of an analysis, a sensory check of sorts, an information find-and-store tool. Sherlock stared at their uncommonly joined hands and, for a moment, Lestrade had the odd feeling he might take them to his lips and taste them, just for the sake of thoroughness. Leather and cold skin. Tasting of steering wheel and forms. And smelling of corpse.

'What are my hands unknowingly – very unknowingly – telling you about me now?'

'Nothing. They're cold and mine aren't. Thought I'd share the warmth.'

'How thoughtful.'

'Hmm.' Sherlock's head had settled against the crook of his neck again. 'Surprised. _Again_.' His cheeks puffed out, pushing very lightly against Lestrade's skin. He was smiling. As novel feelings went, it wasn't entirely unwelcome, and Lestrade found himself shifting so very lightly towards its source, content for a moment in the snug, utter harmlessness of it all.

The arm around his waist tightened a bit as he did so, the comforting rubbing more localised, less choreographed, and Sherlock's breath heavier on his skin. While that wasn't entirely unwelcome either, Lestrade felt compelled to point out that his mind was still too full of the dead bloke to really focus on anything—

'Sherlock.'

'Hmm?'

"Apply your deductive skills to my age, my stamina and tonight's events and see if it's really worth the bother.'

Surprisingly, a smile unfurled against his neck. 'I'm not trying to seduce you.'

'Oh?'

'I'm distracting you.' In all fairness, Sherlock's hand, in its inventive roaming, hadn't quite moved from its relatively chaste perch round his side, and the lips parting against his skin seemed determined to ignore he existed from the neck down. 'Keeping you sound of mind for tomorrow.'

'This is a very peculiar way to do it.'

'Sherlock Holmes,' those maddening lips breathed into his ear. 'Have we met?'

There was no reason not to lift his free hand and casually stroke Sherlock's curls, really, was there? They were alone, it was dark and Lestrade wasn't fully convinced this wasn't all a vivid hallucination, after all. His index finger caught on a curl and wrapped itself in it, following it from where it lay against the nape of Sherlock's neck and along the back of the head. Sherlock held his breath at the touch. Lestrade almost hoped he wouldn't lean into it. They would both have no idea what to do next.

'So, when you say I think like a criminal would—'

Oh, God. 'Forget it. I was rambling.'

'That's when the interesting things come out. Most people assume I _am _one.'

'Do they?'

'Don't you? Every now and then?' Sherlock pulled away to look at him directly, and the waning heat felt oddly disconcerting. 'Some of your team do.'

Lestrade shook his head simply and lifted his hand from Sherlock's hair to reach for his mobile again. Sherlock moved closer still to stop him. He had to shift so they could both fit on his tiny corner of the sofa and, all at once, there was nowhere to look but down his nose or into Sherlock's eyes, narrowed in appreciation of a new puzzle. Lestrade chose the nose.

'It never crosses your incorrupt, honest mind that your team might be right?'

'No,' he snapped in irritation, lifting his eyes to Sherlock's. 'Why, are they?'

'It's just odd someone like you wouldn't consider all angles.'

Lestrade remained disdainfully quiet. Sherlock's gaze was unwavering, but he drew in a tiny, uncharacteristic breath, and Lestrade suddenly knew he was in hot water.

'You're afraid,' Sherlock muttered, sounding shocked himself, 'they might be.'

Any companionship there might have blossomed so far evaporated. Lestrade looked away, swearing under his breath for good measure. 'I can't afford to worry about that,' he eventually granted.

'Yes...?'

'Once I do, I'll have to find out.'

'Or you could just ask me, if it matters so much to you.'

'I know they're wrong,' he countered crossly, meeting Sherlock's eyes, _'for now_. But I see you at work—all that matters is the puzzle. It's what you live for, no matter where it comes from._ I can't work with you _if I ever suspect—if there's a chance you—I'll have to find out. Pick a side. Change the way I—'

The mouth materialising against his effectively cut off his flow.

'Bunch of dunderheaded twerps,' Sherlock pulled away to inform him. And then, without so much as a passing acknowledgement of Lestrade's undignified, muffled 'Thanks,' his hands flew up to cradle Lestrade's jaw and they were kissing again, Sherlock all but climbing onto his lap in his sudden, unplanned haste. Kissing was one of the many stages they usually bypassed on their way to "zips down" and, while it was like attempting a life-saving phrase when you only know two words of the language, it was surprisingly, amazingly easy to get used to it.

For a long moment, then, there was only an incoherent jumble of sounds and shifting around and trouble breathing while they tried to stretch along the sofa without breaking apart. It wasn't always—scratch that, it was _never _like this for them. Lestrade had to admit his response was a bit sloppy at first, his head tilting at an odd angle and his teeth catching Sherlock's lip perhaps a bit too eagerly. But then again, Sherlock's lips had never before quivered, really quivered, in excitement against his, he had never before had trouble balancing a kiss and the need to breathe. And now he was doing both, alternating kisses with loud, shaky, insufficient breaths as he tried to mouth Lestrade's jaw, and gasping, really gasping when Lestrade's lips pried his apart to tease his tongue without ever really touching it. Surely they were allowed a moment of inexpert fumbling.

Only once they had found a mildly safe new position, sideways on the sofa that was doubtlessly too small for Sherlock's refined tastes, did they break apart, briefly, so that Sherlock could whisper against his lips, 'You _need _me.'

No-one but Sherlock could have sounded so victorious whilst holding onto someone's clothes for balance, if not dear life, one leg pressing as hard as it could against the far arm of the sofa and the other gracelessly around one of Lestrade's.

'Well, you _are _the best,' he replied, breathless, shifting to unfold the tangle they had become. 'Don't tell the others.' Sherlock's neck was right there, tense and pale, and Lestrade had a sudden urge to see it redden, possibly twitch under his mouth.

It didn't take long.

'Not them,' Sherlock clarified, his voice a mere rumble, pleasantly strained against his ear. 'You.'

Lestrade stopped mid-exploration of Sherlock's neck to consider the words. Sherlock's breath breezed along his skin, heavy and warm, but essentially restrained, like the man himself. Briefly, he thought about ignoring the taunt and simply enjoying the embrace, this rare, possibly one-off occasion to just... but it wasn't fair. Sherlock's arms had never wound around him so tightly, his head had never lingered for so long on his shoulder, and he had never asked for so little before. They had never kept their clothes on for so long.

And Lestrade was a fair man. Even if it landed him in trouble.

'Yes, I do,' he murmured almost soundlessly into Sherlock's neck, knowing the vibration on the skin would be enough to render the words clear as a shout to the man.

Predictably, the words were barely out when Sherlock lifted his head with a smile. It was a lovely smile, Lestrade thought vaguely, a joyful smile. But every other inch of Sherlock looked utterly predatory and, before he knew it, Lestrade had added, only half-joking, 'God help me.'

Sherlock's smile widened.

'I may try to seduce you now. Let me down gently.'

_  
THE END

Note (a reviewer was rightly confused about John's unexplained absence): this fic is set pre-A Study in Pink, and therefore well before John came along. For the moment, I'm completely seduced by the five years of common history between Sherlock and Lestrade. I suspect it'll be a while before I manage to bring John in, considering how long it takes me to get _anything_ written.


End file.
